Thanks! Just looked into this further. The guidelines say you should use the original title when submitting a story. But what if this title is uninformative and the subtitle is too long? Then you have to summarise. I don't think it's acceptable for a moderator to edit this summary, without giving any notice to readers (this was done several times to me). He should kill the whole submission instead if he doesn't like the title.
Apart from that, I guess it would be much better if submitters had a chance to indicate why they find their submission interesting. Just a thought.
It's fine to make a title short enough to fit the limit. It's fine to use a subtitle if that's more informative or less baity. What's not fine is to rewrite the title to put your own spin on the story.
Stories are not the property of the submitter. Being first to post a story confers no privilege to tell others how to perceive it.
In my view, reflecting the content as neutrally as possible is one of the most important principles of HN. HN readers can and should evaluate stories for themselves.
It sounds like you'll be unhappy with the above, but I hope not. It would be nice to see you sooner than another seven years!
Thank you for the explanation! In my 2nd paragraph I had older stories in mind where it's most likely a case of "either I submit it or nobody does". I can see now how my proposal is bad in the "normal" case of hot, new stories.
There should be enough interesting stories out there with good, informative, neutral original titles that it won't be another seven years.
From the guidelines: "If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead". This would seem to explicitly allow telling others how to perceive a story, so I don't really see how the privilege thing can be the crucial point. But reading dang's comment I realised how an inferior title might damage the prospects of a story that would have been submitted under a better title by someone else.
Apart from that, I guess it would be much better if submitters had a chance to indicate why they find their submission interesting. Just a thought.